To Each Their Own
by Snowy Island
Summary: A new generation of heroes. What drives them and binds them together. Drabble collection, ensemble cast.


Updates will be weekly if I can manage. Drabble collection style, ensemble cast. Pairings form where they fall.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing. Golden Sun belongs to its respective owners. I just get to play in the sandbox.

_"How wonderful, to build a family of your fellow adventurers."_

She had been with the adventurers a mere week, the brand new Third-Eye emblem on her forehead a red stain made with ancient promises. Karis and Sveta are beyond kind to her, the Wind Adepts motherly and sisterly in turns. Karis mothered everyone in cycles, least of all Tyrell. She usually started with the girls in the morning, and rallying the rest all throughout the day. She turned out to be quite skilled at fixing torn seams and hems. Reusing fabric to make sure everyone had whole gear. Himi had great affection for her within a few days, missing her parents more than she ever would be able to say aloud.

Sveta and her bonded as only two girls of a close age could do, their own royal upbringings giving them more or less identical tales of sedition and triumphs to share, even given one was Fang and the other Nihanese. She learned of beastman customs, and how fur and claws set one apart as surely as Adept powers did.

Himi was shy of they young men at first. Only with Takeru was she at all familiar, and even their relationship had been indistinct as of late. He was becoming the warrior Susa had been, and she was gaining distance with his every triumph. She was young yet for her parents to consider offers of marriage for her seriously, and any socializing she might have had with young people had taken the back burner to her training and meditation. Since she had been small, learning to move rocks without touching them and interpreting her vision had taken precedence over _friends. _She was content to think that one day her parents would bring before her a young man that was strong, kind, intelligent, and would work in tandem with her for the betterment of all Nihan.

However, since the Third-Eye had come to her, Himi had begun to see the world…quite differently. All her new…comrades?...had their own stories, experiences. Tales of a Weyard bigger than any little island city that had spent a generation recovering from tsunamis. Her illness made her tired often, even as she grew stronger from spending time on Eoleo's ship. She could not help with the sailing as the others could, but could neither stand to be idle. So she did what she was best at. She observed. Asked questions. Learned. The 'Heirs of Vale' became Matt, Ty, Karis. Amiti shared stories of his city of water, Ayuthay, and spoke so fondly of it, that when she gained her confidence, she asked to visit after they stopped the Grave Eclipse. Rief told her endlessly of the world and all his curiosities and theories therein. Infinite wonders that made her head spin by a single mark of listening. Matthew murmured softly and steadily of a tiny cabin overlooking Mt. Aleph in the Goman Highlands. His father and mother, and how the constant vigilance his father over the Golden Sun strained his family.

"The rest of Vale…live in Kalay, mostly. Tyrell grew up there too. Once I showed my powers, Dad started training me, at the cabin," he told her, watching the horizon off the ship, "Trying to get me ready."

_For what?_ Himi hadn't thought to ask. The answer was the journey that had brought them all together. This…adventure? Undertaking? What would people call this in thirty years? Himi pondered this for a time, and posed the question to a single person. Eoleo had looked at her curiously, whetstone currently set to his axe.

"I'unno," he answered. "When my dad stole this boat, I was really, really little. The only reason I remember Kraden at all is cause he was old and beaky then. You don't forget someone that talks that much, heh," the pirate king grinned. "Warriors of Vale, the Golden Sun. Grave Eclipse. Whatever they're gonna call it, we won't have any part of it."

"But…" she interjected, unknowingly stepping out from her persona of a quiet, timid princess and forever leaving it behind. "This journey is ours. Shouldn't we get to call it what we like?" she asked, brows only slightly dipped with her mild confusion.

Eoleo blinked at her, then snorted, one corner of his mouth turned up. "Listen, princess. This may be our journey. Yes, our actions and endeavors are deciding for all the people in the entire world whether they get to keep existing, but that doesn't mean it belongs to us. Whether they know it or not, all those people are looking to us to save them. We are being prayed too, and hoped for, right now. Everyone wants us to succeed and stop this evil. We suffer, but so do they."

"Many have fallen," she acknowledged, recalling the dark visions that had come to claim her when she had been ill. "I wanted so much to get better, when I was in the shadows."

"And the Third Eye chose you," he told her. "Now every wound or scrape or lace of poison you experience, so will they. Some of them are trapped just like you were, waiting for us to free them. You are here to help all of us do that. They can call that what they want."

"Hope," she breathed, realization lighting her eyes as they flew to him in earnest. "We are their hope, right?"

Callused fingers drummed against the axe handle as he considered what she asked. "Yeah, I guess. For me, though, this is revenge." The pirate lord stood, easily a full head taller than the Nihanese princess. "Those guys killed my dad, so I'm going to stop whatever they're trying to do, and destroy them."

Rather than fear, a certain decisiveness coursed through Himi then. She nodded at Eoleo's statement. "I'm not afraid," she declared.

Eoleo only smirked. "You should be. I'm scared outta my boots. But that's doesn't mean we can stop, it just means we're not crazy."

And Himi soon realized that many of the folks they would meet would think that they were crazy, for trying to save the world. But not a single one of those people told them to stop. No one asked them to give up.

_Hope._


End file.
